Brane-antibrane systems and the thermal life of neutral black holes

A brane-antibrane model for the entropy of neutral black branes is developed, following on from the work of Danielsson, Guijosa and Kruczenski [1]. The model involves equal numbers of Dp-branes and anti-Dp-branes, and arbitrary angular momenta, and covers the cases p=0,1,2,3,4. The thermodynamic entropy is reproduced by the strongly coupled field theory, up to a power of two. The strong-coupling physics of the p=0 case is further developed numerically, using techniques of Kabat, Lifschytz et al. [2,3], in the context of a toy model containing the tachyon and the bosonic degrees of freedom of the D0-brane and anti-D0-brane quantum mechanics. Preliminary numerical results show that strong-coupling finite-temperature stabilization of the tachyon is possible, in this context.